We arrived back home late last night (actually early this morning).  We were supposed to be home by about 10 at night.  Things didn’t work out that way.  We’ll get to that later.

We had a great visit with Dr. Agin.  Anna Grace really wasn’t herself during the visit and didn’t talk much at all.  She didn’t open up until almost time to go.  Sooooo I was worried I was going to hear all these awful things, etc.  Instead Dr. Agin told us that she thought AG was doing quite well, she thinks that there may be some oral motor weakness that is causing trouble in addition to the apraxia.  Blah Blah Blah.  Dr. Agin also let us know that we’re on the right track with the things we’re doing for AG and that her "gut" tells her Anna Grace will likely be just fine.  She’ll need years of therapy but she thinks that even by the time she is five she’ll fit in just fine with a regular kindergarten. 

Makes me wonder what she would’ve said if Anna Grace had actually been her usual talkative self.

We had fun in New York.  Although it is a Tombstone Tourist’s dream I didn’t visit any cemeteries. Maybe next trip.

Here’s a run down of our trip.  Some photos didn’t come out (drat!).

We saw the tree at Rockefeller Center

passed by Radio City Music Hall

and stopped in at Times Square.

Anna Grace earned the nickname "Katie Couric" because of her non-stop running commentary on EVERYTHING.  No person riding the subway was left without a description.

He has glasses off
Her glasses on.
He has a red hat.  Yep, you’re right.  It’s a red hat.  (Note that she even provides both sides of the conversation)
She’s sitting down.
He’s on the train (twain).

etc etc etc

While we found New Yorkers in general to be quite polite they do like to keep to themselves while on the subway.  So…. having a small child announce their every move was not always met with smiles and such.  Sometimes just strange looks.

Moving on….

I enjoyed watching the sun set from our hotel room (that’s the Hudson)

and going to the top of the Empire State building. (We had photos of the view but, alas, they are blurry.)

We watched the Gators dominate the Fiesta Bowl. Dana is so happy you almost can’t live with him.  I cheered on the Gators a bit.  Although I laughed myself silly when Ohio State got a touchdown in the first 20 seconds of the game.  I thought that would be the theme for the night but boy was I wrong.  Glad for the state of Florida.  Hoping FSU beats the trash out of the Gators (and knocks their pride down a notch) come November for the gamegamegame.  (See?  Back to my usual self.)

Since I can’t sleep at night without listening to the soothing tones of David Letterman’s voice I thought I needed my photo taken here….

We even searched the block until we found the Hello Deli .  For those of you who don’t watch Letterman, Rupert takes part in many of the Late Show’s running gags.  Again, we took a photo.  Photo didn’t turn out.

Although I’m not a big fan of natual history museums (OK, I hate them.  Florida’s is one of the suckiest one’s you’ll find.) I had  ball, and so did AG, at the one in New York.  It’s way cool.

I did some knitting ( a lot actually) on Telemark’s sleeve.  I’m almost out of the main color.  Placed an order with knitpicks… and tossed in some other goodies as well.  Gotta get that free shipping!  Hey, did y’all notice their price for free shipping went up?  Last year it was 40 bucks, now it’s an order totaling (totalling?   how many L’s????)  45 bucks.  So I bought 5 more bucks worth of stuff!

Our bizarre and tiring trip home started at 2:45 EST on Wednesday.  We got on a Super Shuttle to go to JFK for a 6:10 flight.  Super Shuttle chose the pick up time based on our departure time.  At 5:00 we still had not reached the airport.  Super Shuttle had overbooked the shuttle and we were now stuck in "rush hour" traffic.

We made it to the airport and got to our gate with about 20 minutes to spare.  We boarded at 5:45, got AG settled,etc.  She is quite good on a plane, even long plane rides.  As long as the plane is moving, she’s fine.  Lots of air traffic.  We were in a long line of planes waiting to take off.  We were sitting still for long periods of time and the plane finally took off after 7:00.

All in all she did ok with this.  She had lost it on the Shuttle (lots of sitting still with vehicle not moving) but had finally taken a nap. So we used every distraction technique we had until the plane took off.

We were in the air for four hours (thus on the plane for about 5 hours) when she started to get real antsy.  The battery on the DVD player had died and I started taking her on "walks" up and down the aisle.  She is still happy-ish.  Then when we were about an hour outside of Seattle she melted down and pitched a world class, wrestling match, Scarlet O-Hara would be proud, hissy fit.  It was ugly and, dare I say, a bit loud.

I get her calm, she falls asleep.  I’m thinking this traveling will soon come to an end when the pilot makes an announcement. Sea-Tac airport is closed due to snow.  They are clearing one runway.  All planes will have to use that runway.  The runway has not been cleared as of yet and we will be flying in circles for 25 minute to an hour until we are cleared to land.  This is in addition to the 6 hours and 20 minutes we’ve already been flying.  Which is in addition to all the time spent sitting on the runway.  (!)

So…. for those of you keeping track…..

that’s a 2 hour and 15 minute shuttle ride
One hour and 15 minutes on a non-moving plane
Six hours and 20 minutes of flying to the Washington airspace
One world class temper tantrum
and one hour and 20 minutes of extra snow induced flight time.

Due to snow and such it also took quite a while to get our luggage.  We then had to drive home in our little snow fall/storm/whatever it was.  In other words we drove the 40 miles home traveling approx 30 miles an hour. 

Here’s the snow photo from later afternoon today.

The snow started to melt a bit this afternoon but not much.  Schools are closed.  Hoping they will be open tomorrow so AG can go to therapy. (The therapy center closes when schools close).  If AG does have therapy I hope more of the snow has melted since I don’t exactly have snow-driving skills.  They kinda leave that stuff out of Florida Driver’s ed.  classes.

Glad to be home.  Like the looks of the snow.  Think it’s pretty cool. We’re housebound due to my lack of experience with this kind of driving but the snow is very pretty.